The Cash for the Community scheme, funded by the Cambridge Building Society, is back- and each day this week, the News will be profiling each of the 16 nominees all aiming to get a share of the £12,000 jackpot.

This year, we are happy to announce that the shortlist has increased to sixteen nominees, in order to give more community organisations across the city a chance to win their share of the £12,000 jackpot that will help them continue to deliver their vital services.

Head of Marketing at Cambridge Building Society, Carole Charter, said: “We’ve been delighted with the standard and quality of the entries this year and this resulted in a very close outcome in the voting, so we’ve decided to increase the number of eligible charities for 2017 to 16.”

To have your say as to which of the finalists should get their prize, collect the tokens which will be printed on page two of the News every day from next Monday (July 24).

Once the final tokens have been printed on Friday (July 28), head down to any branch of the Cambridge Building Society, or the News office, to drop them off. You can find us at Winship Road, Milton, CB24 6BQ.

The amount of tokens received for each charity will then be calculated, with a proportionate amount of the cash prize allocated to each successful group. Each day, we will be printing tokens for three community organisations.

Here are the first five of the sixteen finalists.

Arthur Rank Hospice Charity

Pictures from the Cambridge News and Media Business Excellence Awards 2017 at Kings College. Winner of the Allia Award for Social Entrepreneurship Arthur Rank Hospice Charity receiving their award from Justin Webb left and Tim Jones from Allia. Picture: Keith Jones

Arthur Rank Hospice Charity supports adults in Cambridgeshire who are living with a life-limiting illness and also provides much needed support to their loved ones. The charity is passionate about optimising its three greatest assets: its volunteers, staff and supporters. This powerful combination enables the hospice team to deliver significantly more care than the NHS would be able to provide if working alone. The Arthur Rank Hospice’s strategic vision is to ensure the very best patient experience through the delivery of excellent, innovative, compassionate and timely, specialist and community-based palliative care.

This year the charity will need to raise more than £7 million to fund vital services and care, which are provided free of charge for our patients and their loved ones. Funding could enable them to help more patients to live well and support more families to live on.

Cambridge Breastfeeding Alliance

Foundation - Cambridge Breastfeeding Group

The Cambridge Breastfeeding Alliance was set up in 2014 when Cambridgeshire County Council cuts hit breastfeeding support services in the city.

Catherine Muge, from the Cambridge Breastfeeding Alliance, said: "New babies can feel overwhelming, especially if breastfeeding is hard. Most mothers say they stopped breastfeeding before they wanted to due to a lack of support. We provide free skilled breastfeeding support through a weekly breastfeeding drop-in, where our trained breastfeeding counsellors provide instant practical support and information for mothers and babies to help them overcome challenges and reach their breastfeeding goals.

"Each of our drop-in sessions costs around £200 to run. As a small charity, this funding would help us continue to offer support to those women seeking it, in turn benefiting some of the smallest, and most vulnerable, members of our community".

Home-Start Cambridgeshire

Home-Start Cambridgeshire trains and supports volunteers to work alongside parents in their own homes, to help them cope in difficult times. Volunteers work alongside each family for two hours a week, for up to six months. Home-Start Cambridgeshire supported more than 200 families last year alone.

This funding would enable Home-Start to train and support more volunteers to continue to support local families and children.

Little Miracles help support families with children that have autism, additional needs, disabilities and life-limiting condition, as well as their carers and siblings, across Cambridge, Ely and Newmarket. This is done both physically and remotely, supporting both their home and educational environments. The focus of the charity is very much around inclusion, improvement of social skills and supporting active lifestyles as much as possible.

Any funding received will help towards delivering around 50 projects and events over the next 24 months. Little Miracles are presently working on many inclusion areas and delivering such things as weekly disability football, a dedicated portable media suite to work with the children on media and video. These sessions aim to merge education and fun.

Motor Neurone Disease Association Cambridgeshire Branch

The Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association support those living with MND throughout Cambridgeshire. MND is, at present, a terminal and often rapidly progressive disease which affects the brain and spinal cord, leaving people unable to move, speak and breathe. From diagnosis, life expectancy is usually two to five years and it can affect any age from early adulthood. The branch offers advice and support to the whole family and aims to help the sufferer lead as normal a life as possible.

The association would like to be able to give its members a better quality of life by providing more immediate help with essential items of equipment, respite breaks and giving the carer free time - very necessary when providing continuous 24/7 care. They would also like to look at providing alternative therapy/counselling sessions, not only for the person living with MND but their spouse/carer. Finally, the funds would also be able to pay for transport for MND sufferers to go out to events and see friends, as members are often house-bound and can feel very isolated in their home.